“How does it feel?” she asks.
“How does what feel?”
She doesn’t answer but motions from the top of her head down to her toes.
“I mean, it feels weird having so much less hair, and I miss my old clothes. These are a little stiff. But Miney says it was about time and that change is good. I’m not sure if I agree with her on that latter point.”
“You look so…different,” Kit says.
“Really?” I ask, which is stupid, since I already know I look different. What I want to ask is: Do you like it?
“I almost didn’t recognize you. You look like a totally different person. Not that you looked bad before. I didn’t mean that.”
“I didn’t take it that way,” I say.
“It’s just you look…good. Really good. Like, totally different. Never mind. I’ll stop talking now.”
I look up at her again and our eyes catch, and this time I decide to push through the discomfort and hold on. She smiles, but I’m pretty sure it’s a sad smile, because I want her to stop doing it. Her face is all closed up again.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” she says. “Also, I forgot to pack my lunch.”
I push forward two of my small plates—a cookie and an apple—before it hits me. This is the opportunity Miney has been talking about. I should ask Kit to grab some food after school. That would “keep up the momentum,” which Miney claims is necessary if I ever want Kit to press her lips against mine. Which I do want. Very much.
“Do you care to—?” I don’t get to finish my question—I don’t get to say, Do you care to go to the diner with me after school?—because Justin hurls himself across the cafeteria and lands in the chair beside Kit. His arrival is like an alien invasion. No, worse. A nuclear bomb.
“Holy crap, you scared me!” Kit says. I don’t say anything, because I don’t like to talk around Justin. Past experience has demonstrated that nothing good can come from that. Not a second later, Gabriel is here too, because the two of them have some strange symbiotic relationship. A sea anemone to a hermit crab. One cannot function without the other.
“Nice haircut,” Gabriel says, and reaches out his hands toward my head. I flinch and bend away. “For a second there, I thought you were your sister.”
I’m about to say thank you, because my sister is universally acknowledged as an attractive person, but then I catch myself. Of course he’s not complimenting me. I hear Miney in my head: Remember who you are talking to. Always stop and examine the context.
“Leave him alone,” Kit says, and leans over and grabs my apple. She takes a big bite, as if she is proving some point. Maybe that she and I share food sometimes.
“What is this, Extreme Makeover: Retard Edition?” Justin asks, and then gets an overly enthusiastic high five from Gabriel.
“You guys are idiots,” Kit says, and I don’t like how this is going. I don’t want her to think of me as the kind of person who needs defending. I am not.
After the Locker Room Incident, again irrelevant to present circumstances, my father hung a leather punching bag in our basement and taught me how to box. He said that it was obvious that I was like him, that school would be hard for me, that at some point I was going to be forced to defend myself. Since that day, I’ve dedicated fourteen hours a week to physical exercise and self-defense training and have dabbled in various martial arts. I know if I had to, I could easily kick both of their asses. I mean that both literally and figuratively. When I studied kung fu, I learned how to do a swivel kick and pin my opponent to the ground, face down.
“Would you please excuse us? We were having a conversation,” I say, turning my attention back to Kit, hoping that what my mother used to tell me when I was little would finally hold true: If you ignore them, they will go away.
Nope, nothing has changed. Didn’t work then. Doesn’t work now.
“Would you please excuse us?” Justin says, imitating me but in a fake British accent, which makes no sense. I’m obviously not British. We’ve gone to school together since kindergarten. In New Jersey.
“Go away, guys,” Kit says. “I really can’t deal with your crap today.”
“Relax. We just wanted to say hey. We miss you, girl,” Gabriel says, all smiles. Like he and Kit are best friends. Which I don’t believe they are, despite the fact that they held hands on at least eight separate occasions for two weeks last year.
I’ve thought about how Kit’s hand would feel in mine. I have concluded it would feel like the exact opposite of that fold in my new jeans.
A few more words are exchanged—Justin says something to Kit and she says something back—but I’m not listening. I study the back of my water bottle. Demote them to background noise. I think back to middle school, all those times I did whatever Justin asked. Snapped a teacher’s bra. Pulled down my own pants. Other things I won’t mention. In seventh grade I was flattered by his attention, by the fact that when I was with him, we could make people laugh. I thought we were best friends.
I thought a lot of things that weren’t true then.
I reach for my notebook and put it next to my plate. Rub my hands over the cover. I will not open it here, but having Miney’s rules set out and nearby helps. Justin and Gabriel are at the top of the Do Not Trust list. That’s all I need to remember.
Rule #1: Do not engage with people on the DNT list.
Rule #2: Do not engage with people on the DNT list.
Rule #3: Do not engage with people on the DNT list.
Miney put it in there three times, rendering it even more important than her latest edict not to talk to a girl about her weight.
Finally, Justin pops up as if he is ready to leave our table. I feel something release in my chest. But I should know better. My Notable Encounters list will tell you that I’ve never left a conversation with Justin unscathed. He leans down to whisper in my ear, his hand firmly planted on my head.
“You may have gotten a haircut, but you’re still weird as hell,” he says, his tongue so close to my ear I can feel his wet, disgusting breath. I clench my fists. I want to turn around and punch him right in the face.
He has no right to touch me.
I know that if I hit him, there will be consequences, as there always are with Justin. Suspension or detention, notes on my permanent record. The kind of stuff that could hurt my chances of getting into a good college. Before Kit joined my lunch table, that’s all I could think about. That one day I would get to leave Mapleview and hopefully go to a school where I could start over. Where no one knew about my mistakes.
And also there is this: If I were to hit Justin, there’s a good chance I’d break his nose, and if I broke his nose, I’d get his blood and skin cells and DNA all over my knuckles. I do not want to have to wash Justin off. Disgusting.
I focus instead on Kit. Ignore my instincts and stare directly into her eyes.